Farewell to a Legend

It was very sad news yesterday to hear that Ginger McCain had passed away at the age of 80 after a short illness.  In the early days when I used to do the Pontins holiday camps I used to play table tennis at Southport and Ginger trained not far from the holiday camp.  I remember seeing Red Rum and Billy Ellison galloping along Southport beach and I love that great photo of Billy with his feet right up near Red Rums head.  Whenever I saw Ginger at Aintree he always had a lot of people around him and it was always a buzzing atmosphere.  He was a larger than life character and his characiture looked more like him than he did himself!  When you talk about great characters, Ginger was certainly one of them and there are less and less of people like him around today.  

Ginger always spoke his mind and you always had to expect the unexpected.  I saw a clip on the television yesterday of him driving up the gallops in his tractor and then the cameras captured him giving them the 'v' sign!  I am sure something is already in the pipeline but they should have some sort of memorial of Ginger alongside Red Rum's statue at Aintree.  A racing legend who will be sadly missed.

There is jump racing action at Newton Abbot this afternoon and David sends three runners down to our local track.  Frosted Grape has been running consistently of late and finished runner up by a head at Ffos Las last time out.  The winner that day, Templer re-opposes this afternoon but our mare has a chance of reversing the form at the weights.  She is trying the 3m2f trip for the first time but she looked in every need of the step up in distance last time so we are hoping for a good run.  Very Cool and Surfboard both run in the final race at 5.10pm.  Surfboard was a good third at Plumpton on Sunday and Very Cool does have to improve a little on recents runs but David's young conditional Francis Hayes takes a very valuable 10 pounds off his back.  We are hoping the rain stays away from Newton Abbot for all of our runners.  They have had no rain overnight and the grounds good, good to firm in places with no rain forecast before racing.  It is however very dark and gloomy at Pond House with rain looking imminent so we shall see what happens!  Have a nice day everybody and enjoy the action from Newton Abbot. 

Update to earlier story: SURFBOARD is now a non-runner at Newton Abbot this afternoon in the 5.10pm race.